[SIC] 262: Hounds Down

Volume Six, Number Two

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Corollary sources this week: The Daily Upside / Semafor / The Future Party / Ben-Evans / Milk Road / Roca News / Motive Unknown / Axios / Politico / Kottke / After School / Today in Tabs / Strat Scraps / Brendans Communication Miscellany / BoF / Public Announcement / The New Statesman

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Hi all,

Apropos of Jacob Gallagher’s tweet about “Tom Hardy[s] Inexplicable Accent” - We So Fucking Back”. Summer swelter continues in NY, but everybody’s returned to town for it now. Personally I’m looking forward to things resuming ‘normal’ speed, whatever that means.

For my part, I’m off to England tomorrow to check out the Goodwood Revival on Sunday with my Culture Club Show comrades - lots more to come on that note, but if you’re in London the first half of next week, say hi. I’m doing a London edition of Breakfast Club on Wednesday, too - you’re invited. Will be nice to see friends in the UK.

Speaking of friends, grateful as always to [SIC] homie James Friedman, Celeste Blewitt, Molly Raskin, Piers Fawkes, Cam Farrelly, Josh Gardiner and Nick Dodziuk for contributions this week. My inbox truly is open to all —so if you encounter any stories that would be pertinent to this dispatch, send em!

Apropos of that: the links follow. Enjoy.

Ben

Fashion Week Canceled Collateral

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The Macro Narrative

• The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel / NYT

• Which reminds us to ask, how are the Aliens getting here? / YT

• Cause, like: "If Earth were an exoplanet, JWST would know there's an intelligent civilization here." / Phys.org

• Off topic: Where in the World Are People Back in the Office? / NYT

• Related: A record number of moms have entered the workforce / Axios

• While Humanoid robots are starting to work side by side with actual people in warehouses for the first time / Axios

• Meanwhile, Chatbots are hard at work tracking down your lost shipments / WSJ 🔏

• And the Drug cartels are exploiting the banana industry to ship cocaine / APNews

• While a new Chinese cell phone is freaking everybody out / Politico

• Ergo: How capitalism is driving the culture wars / The New Statesman

• Related: bad behaviors unleashed during the stress of the pandemic era aren't slowing down / Axios

• To wit: How Telling People to Die Became Normal / The Atlantic

• Which leads right into The Erratic Flight Patterns Edition of WITI, on behavior, stress, and US culture / Why Is This Interesting

• From Molly: How to live with the L.A. hot girl mentality, according to the ‘Jane Goodall of L.A. hot girls’ / LA Times

• In times of permacrisis, brand is more important than ever / The Drum

• Burning Man, Electric Zoo, Fyre: Why do festivals keep going wrong? / WaPo 🔏

• Who Owns Trump’s Mugshot, a Contender for the Image of the Century? / The New York Sun

• Elsewhere, but corollary: Who are the Americans? (Part 1): Climate Control / The Lindy Newsletter

• These Are the Weirdest Things Americans Do, According to People in Other Countries / Distractify

• Apropos: Movers in New York City see a whole lot more than furniture when clearing out an apartment / NYT

• Also, lawsuits. In re the matter of Dee’s Nuts v. Deez Nutz / Point Two

• Which, corollary, begs the question: What does it mean to be “dickmatized”? / Feeld

Generationations

• Girlhood: The viral Agony Aunt for Teens Blowing Up on TikTok / BBC

• The Case for Giving Psychedelics to Kids / DoubleBlind

• The Recruiting Crisis: US Military Adapts to Zoomers / YT

• While Brands like Chipotle, JetBlue are spotlighting employees in ads as they sek Gen Z talent for fall / Digiday

• Related, from Molly: 'The world is rapidly evolving': How Gen Z is rethinking the idea of college / Business Insider

• From Celeste: “While this is a strike and union focused piece, it also highlights the changes in generational conversation on work, work/life balance and structural changes of work, plus the power of social media. The Gen-Zers Leading A Pro-Union Push” / BBC

Platformations

• Tiktok has Transformed the Concert Experience / Vox

• Hence, [SIC] homie Amber Findlay’s The Movies on Tik Tok Edition / Why is This Interesting

• The voice actor behind TikTok’s text-to-speech function, aka “the voice of TikTok,” is coming to the Calm app / Tubefilter

• Tiktok is gearing up for a big push into messaging / The Verge

• While Clubhouse is pivoting to messaging too / Clubhouse

• Elsewhere, Quibi dies a final death as Roku kills many of its shows / LowPass

• While Apple acquires 50-year-old 'leading record label' to bolster Apple Music Classical / 9to5mac

• Some veteran YouTube staff think Shorts might ruin YouTube / The Verge

• Across the pond: Meta may offer paid ad-free Facebook and Instagram in Europe / The Verge

• Also, is the end of Truth Social in sight? / Quartz

Stylistics

• Breaking Free from the Artifice of the Fashion Shoot / Frieze

• Related, in a way: debunking the dream. Is working in fashion going out of style? / Vogue Business

• From Josh: This one made me think of all those Waystar Royco hoodies we saw around the place. What's real, anyway ;) / It’s Nice That

• On the topic: Are you ever too old to wear vintage? / NYT

• Apropos: 'Hot Chlo Summer: Chloë Sevigny Ends The Season With Fucking Awesome Collab' / Dazed

• Is this an ad for the Gunners or Gucci? Soccer clubs are going high-fashion for kit launches / The Drum

• Related: KidSuper founder Colm Dillane on Jack Grealish, SpaceX and brand collaboration / Jing Daily

• While Salehe Bembury Knows What Sneakers You’ll Be Wearing Next Year/ WSJ 🔏

• And Calvin Klein has launched a sustainable trainer made from a blend of plant-based materials and TENCEL lyocell fibers / Vegeconomist

• So Could you quit leather? The industry banned fur. Animal hides are now facing the same scrutiny. But what are the alternatives, and are they any good? / FT

• Specialist companies are racing to find technology-fuelled solutions so that ultimately all textiles can be recycled / Vogue Business

• This is the work of a furniture designer researching the future of the human body / Ergonomic Futures

Culturations

• The Folk Implosion’s Music From ‘Kids’ Is Returning. The Band Is, Too / NYT

• More nostalgia: Freddie Mercury collection smashes expectations at Sotheby’s / The Art Newspaper

• Hence, from Cam: “This is cute, compelling, and worth considering .... Have You Seen Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar? / NYT

• Musician Jeff Rosenstock criticises venues taking merch cuts / Music Ally

• Ghostwriter’s “Heart On My Sleeve,” which features the deepfaked vocals of Drake and The Weeknd, has been submitted for Grammy considerationi / Variety

• SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents actors, is preparing for another possible strike against several major video game companies / Deadline

• Related: How to Destroy a Creative Industry (And How to Save It) / LA Review of Books

• Ergo: The box office braces for a 2024 slowdown despite summer success / Future Party

• While Top Hollywood executives shift strike messaging strategy / Axios

• Which means we’ll be hearing a lot more about why “Alone” Is the Best Reality Show Ever Made / The New Yorker

• And Even the Publicists Are Influencers Now. Just Ask Gia Kuan / Vanity Fair

• Doppelganger — Naomi Klein follows her double down the rabbit hole / FT

• More Klein x Wolf, from James: “A couple weeks old but wild” / Vanity Fair

• Which leads fluidly into: Gaslight, The Ingrid Bergman Film that Sparked the Modern Term / Far Out

• Speaking of gaslighting? How did a sports-licensing CEO become this generation’s Gatsby? / Vanity Fair

• And The most famous journalist in the world  is a soccer guy/ CJR

• From Molly: Is Tradwife Content Dangerous or Just Stupid? / The Cut

• ‘Royal Academy who?’ Rejects rejoice at getting own show. The walk of shame exhibition featuring vetoed works will now be an annual event / The Art Newspaper

• From Nick: “Maybe you saw this, maybe you didn’t. Customs Cars Cultures at UncleBrother FYI. I think the show just closed” / Contemporary Art Daily

• Still open: Your A-Z Guide to New York City’s September Art Fairs / Hyperallergic

• And, always open, another from James: Less old but not the newest… pretty cool tho [Tokyo’s Coin-Operated Laundries - In Pictures] / The Guardian

Technopolis

• US scientists develop "nanoscale" coating to combat spread of fires / Dezeen

• While Yale is embracing ChatGPT and generative AI in education instead of banning it / MIT

• And This ad agency is using AI to help Alzheimer’s patients hold onto their memories / The Drum

• So What's stopping big brands like Pepsi and Frito-Lay from embracing AI? / Digiday

• Maybe that the Generative AI Boom Could Fuel a New International Arms Race?! / Wired

• AI hype is over, but the revolution continues / Bloomberg

• The metaverse is alive, and AI is helping brands to dream bigger in virtual worlds / The Drum

• The world’s lawyers are making a pretty penny from crypto’s collapse / NYT

• How digital cash got caught up in the culture wars / FT 🔏

• The best Bitcoin explainer of all time / Twitter

• The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free? / Wired

Media-tions

• Not Long Gone: Paper magazine relaunches / WWD

• Amidst social media fragmentation, marketers question Threads' value after initial surge / Digiday

• Key Quote: “There’s no point in making a wonderful website or an amazing app if people aren’t going to the website or downloading the app.” A local WhatsApp newsletter is helping people make the most of a Spanish city / Nieman Lab

• While Audiophiles are still tuned in to the radio  / FT 🔏

• Just ask Britain’s smallest radio station / Monocle Pod

• Spotify wants more adverts from small and medium businesses / Music Ally

• Hence: Spotify is muting ads on white-noise podcasts and raising the required number of listeners that podcasts need to qualify for its Ambassador Ads program from 100 to 1,000 / Bloomberg 🔏

• Meanwhile Deezer is deleting the white noise altogether / Music Business Weekly

• Related: Sirius XM introduced a brand safety and suitability verification solution for podcast advertisers / Digiday

• Amid a rift with Disney, the CEO of the US' second-largest cable provider said the cable TV industry is broken / Axios

• But while Ad-supported streaming captures viewers, but doesn’t yet dominate marketers’ playbooks / Digiday

• In fact, GroupM estimates that retail media advertising will be $125bn in 2023 - almost as big as TV and bigger than all other legacy media combined / Group M

Market / Influence

• Brian Morrissey on Sequencing is a smart read / The Rebooting

• Speaking of sequencing, from Celeste: “A great read on what happens next for dvd's streaming and tech of the past. A brilliant recollection of the difference in choosing a dvd over streaming options” [Conversations Of A Netflix Dead-Ender] /The Atlantic

• How J.C. Penney is pivoting its brand as part of $1B company turnaround plan / Retail Dive

• [SIC] homie Michael Fanuele on how to do brave brand marketing in a performance-based world / AdAge 🔏

• Amer Sports, owner of Arc’teryx and Salomon, filed for a US initial public offering / Bloomberg 🔏

• Corollary: Luxury, Adidas and ‘made in China’: What Saudi fashion consumers are buying / Jing Daily

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• WaPo wades into the best pizza in America, by region and style debate / WaPo 🔏

• Also tricky: the ‘shroom boom’ is here but it’s complicated. Health-conscious drinkers are leading the way in adding mushrooms as functional ingredients to their beverages / Food Dive

• This Brilliant ‘Champagne’ Has Everything — Except Alcohol / Departures

• From Piers: Anchor Brewing Employees Launch GoFundMe to Buy Brewery / SFist

• From Piers: The MacOS App Icon Book / Kickstarter

• And a third from Piers: A photographer captures the people behind NYC’s community gardens / Gothamist

• The Glamorous, Lonely Lives of Private Chefs / NYT

• The secretive world of superyachts / Business Insider

• A Chinese woman claims to have recorded footage of a potential 50-foot-long sea monster in a remote lake / NYPost

• ‘Sisu’: The art of Finnish fortitude / Monocle

• From Blacktop to Green: Cities Are Depaving for a Cooler Future / Reasons to Be Cheerful

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